(Bloomberg) -- Rishi Sunak had one warning for the Conservatives in an otherwise low-profile speech at the party’s annual conference: End the “squabbling” that derailed his UK premiership. It likely fell on dead ears.
The first day was dominated by jibes between the front-runners in the race to succeed Sunak as leader, former Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch and former immigration minister Robert Jenrick. Tory hopes of a show of unity and a conference bereft of personal attacks — even as the candidates delivered their pitches — lay in shreds before the meeting had even got going.
It was far from ideal for a party seeking to capitalize on the new Labour government’s early troubles under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, including a row over donations and an MP quitting his party over the weekend. The Tories came to conference in a better mood than expected just weeks on from their seismic election defeat on July 4, and Sunak’s message was meant to focus minds.
Perhaps predictably, it was Badenoch — a politician known for speaking her own mind and picking political fights — who stole the early headlines, writing an op-ed for the Sunday Telegraph saying not all cultures are “equally valid” and telling Times Radio that statutory maternity pay is “excessive.”
She later rowed back on the latter, posting on the social media platform X: “Of course I believe in maternity pay!” But remarks that were always likely to be divisive became the topic of the day, as Jenrick said he disagreed with Badenoch on maternity pay and their teams traded hostile briefings.
The other two candidates, ex-Home Secretary James Cleverly and former security minister Tom Tugendhat, also made clear they disagreed with her.
Badenoch later told the BBC that Jenrick, who considers his tough stance on immigration as his selling point with grassroots Tories, had misrepresented her stance on the issue. “It shows that he’s not actually reading or listening to what I’m saying,” she later told GB News.
The Tory conference has been designed around the candidate and their pitches, with hustings and speeches from all four scheduled on the main stage. There’s no photo of Sunak on the program cover, which has the slogan “Review and Rebuild.” After the meeting, Tory MPs will narrow the field to a final pair, with grassroots members picking a winner to be announced in November.
Conservative officials were determined that the infighting that dominated their time in government should be banished from the leadership contest. They’ve introduced a yellow card system to try to admonish candidates who overstep.
But as the contest has drawn on, fractures are beginning to appear particularly between Jenrick — the bookmakers’ favorite — and Badenoch, who is seen as the likely winner of a runoff but is more of a divisive figure among Tory MPs.
Alongside the question of who leads the party, there is also a major debate in Birmingham about strategy. The Tories won just 121 MPs after being hemmed in by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party on the right, with its strong anti-immigration message, and the Liberal Democrats and Labour on the left.
Jenrick said the party could appeal again to both sets of voters, and that the leadership choice should resolve the Tory position on key issues including migration. He reiterated his call for an annual cap on immigration.
“I don’t want to waste the next five years debating those things, that’s a recipe for more infighting and for further loss of public trust,” he told the BBC.
The Tories in government tried to stop migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats from France with a policy to deport arrivals to Rwanda with no right of return. The new Labour government has since scrapped the plan after no deportation flights ever got off the ground.
Yet the past government’s record complicates the message for the candidates, all four of whom served in Sunak’s administration.
Cleverly, who as home secretary was sent out to defend the Rwanda policy that he’s privately reported to have disagreed with, told Sky News on Sunday that his job was to speak for the government.
“I have been a team player, which has meant I have had to promote other people’s ideas,” he said. He blamed “constant infighting” for the Tory defeat, and also leveled an apparent dig at other colleagues: “I have not spent that time promoting my own ideas.”
Tugendhat, too, called for the bickering to stop, telling delegates that MPs owed them an apology. “It needs to end. And under my leadership it will end.”
For Sunak, it was all too little, too late. He’s deliberately not endorsed any of the contenders, and still in his mid-40s, has had to come to terms with the fact that his career at the top of British politics is over after less than two years as premier. Offering advice to Labour MPs in his first address to the House of Commons after losing July’s election, he said “life comes at you fast.”
If the conference program is accurate, Sunak won’t even address the main floor. His plea for unity on Sunday was at a welcome reception.
“I want to finish with one, final ask of you: whoever wins this contest, give them your backing,” Sunak said. “We must end the division, the backbiting, the squabbling. We mustn’t nurse old grudges but build new friendships. We must always remember what unites us rather than obsessing about where we might differ. Because when we turn in on ourselves we lose.”
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